ACCRA – Ghana is benefiting little from its mineral wealth and needs a review of its mining code and tax policies, said Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia.
While the West African nation holds a 10% stake in most mines in the country, it has earned almost nothing in dividends since 2012, rendering the operations “virtually useless,” Bawumia said Tuesday at a conference in the capital, Accra.
Ghana has to “re-examine our natural resources control and governance strategy, our resource fiscal regime from exemptions to carried interest, and how to use our natural resources to build a better and prosperous economy,” Bawumia said.
Hosting operations for gold producers from AngloGold Ashanti to Kinross Gold, the continent’s second-biggest producer of the metal also mines bauxite and diamonds. An exporter of oil and the world’s second-largest cocoa grower, Ghana’s government is driving policies to derive more benefit from its commodities and discourage unprocessed exports.